


Careful, Madam

by BlueVase



Category: Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier & Related Fandoms, Rebecca - Levay/Kunze
Genre: Angry Sex, Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Smut, Danvich - Freeform, F/F, Lesbian Sex, Mistress and Servant, Oral Sex, POV Lesbian Character, Sexy Times, Smut, cheating in your husband's bed, sexy dressing up, the one ship i thought I'd never write
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:21:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24998245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueVase/pseuds/BlueVase
Summary: As the second Mrs de Winter gets ready for Manderley's costume ball, Mrs Danvers comes to help her with her costume. After all, Rebecca would never have allowed a mere maid to dress her, and Mrs Danvers is not about to let standards slip.TW: domestic violence, rape (alluded to)
Relationships: Danvich, I/Danvers, Ich/Danvers, Mrs Danvers/I, Mrs Danvers/Ich, Mrs Danvers/Mrs de Winter, Mrs Danvers/Narrator, Mrs Danvers/the second Mrs de Winter, Mrs. Danvers/ the second Mrs. de Winter, Mrs. Danvers/I, Mrs. Danvers/Ich, Mrs. Danvers/Mrs. de Winter, Mrs. Danvers/Narrator
Comments: 58
Kudos: 23





	1. Chapter 1

A/N: I’ve done it. I’ve written a scandalously smutty fic for a pair I’d never thought I’d write: Mrs Danvers and the I (Ich) from Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. I think it might well be the most smutty thing I have ever written, and I had a blast doing it! Hope you guys like it! Thanks to Nita for giving me the idea and encouraging me, and thanks to Illa, too!

I had just gone up to my room to get dressed for Manderley’s fancy dress ball when the knock on my door came. I sat next to the box with my dress, surrounded by tissue paper, dressed in nothing but my underwear and slip.

“Come in!” 

The door opened with a soft snick as I plunged my hand in the box with my wig and held it up to the light. “Look, Clarice, isn’t it lovely? This little curl here has gotten flattened, but there’s still time to fluff it out again, don’t you think?”

“Certainly, Madam.” The voice was cold and soft, a dead, mechanical thing, the voice of an automaton. I jumped to my feet, clutching the wig against my chest. Mrs Danvers looked at me with those strange, fierce eyes of hers, a little smile tugging at the corners of her pale lips. “Careful, Madam; you’ll crush those curls.”

Little cold hands travelled across my spine. Gooseflesh rippled over my arms. “You really shouldn’t be here,” I said stupidly. Then, realising how that sounded, I added, “There must be so much for you to do still, Mrs Danvers, that you couldn’t possibly waste your time with me. If you’ll be so kind as to send Clarice up, she’ll help me get dressed.” I wished my throat and cheeks wouldn’t flush so terribly, and my voice not sound like that of a little girl. 

But Mrs Danvers kept standing there, one hand around the doorknob, the other one playing with the stuff of her dress. I did not know what she wanted of me. She kept her eyes trained on my face, and I did not know whether to be grateful for the fact she did not look at my body, or to squirm under that piercing, superior gaze of hers. In the end I stooped to pick up the box in which the wig had come. I placed it on my dresser, simply to have something to do, and knocked one of my brushes off. Immediately Mrs Danvers glided through the room and took it in her hand before I could pick it back up again.

“Thank you,” I said, and took it from her. Her hand was cold. I sat down in front of the mirror and began to comb my hair, humming a little tune, as if I was not wildly excited, as if I did this every day.

“You should put on the dress before the wig, Madam. You’ll have to pin up your hair, or else strands of it will peek out.” She stepped behind me and took a lock of hair between her long, lean fingers. “Like so,” she said, and twisted the hair into a little curl. She pressed it against my scalp, reached for a bobby pin, and secured it carefully. Her touch was deliberate, precise. I looked at the reflection of her hands. They were quite beautiful, I saw; no amount of hard work could destroy that elegant taper to her fingers, or those slender, carefully-trimmed nails. These were hands that could train up orchids, wash the dust out of the fold of a china cupid, embroider initials into silky scraps of handkerchiefs. I wondered why I had never realised she had such good hands before. Mine were ugly in comparison, grubby and broad, the hands of a schoolgirl. I stared at my ragged nails. Even if I stopped biting them, they would never be long and lovely.

“Mrs de Winter once hosted a play here,” Mrs Danvers said, pinning another twist of hair in place. “Shakespeare. She had an appetite for him, knew half a dozen parts by heart, and many more monologues. She chose Twelfth Night. Mr de Winter would have loved to see her play Desdemona – Othello has always been a favourite of his – but my lady wouldn’t have it. She wished to play Viola. She adored dressing in britches, you see. She hadn’t cut her hair then, so we ordered a wig for her. We had to use so many pins to keep her hair in place. I remember her pulling off the wig during the party she hosted afterwards, and she shed pins like a pine sheds needles. It made her laugh, but then my mistress loved to laugh.” Her voice had lost that dead quality, that grating monotony. She spoke quite freely now, quite quickly. 

Rebecca, with her wild cloud of hair and her lovely ways, who was so clever she could recite Shakespeare by heart. I had never had a head for poetry and plays. I tried to remember the sonnets I had been forced to learn at school, but the only things that I managed to dredge up were nursery rhymes, Humpty Dumpty, that sort of thing. Rebecca was beauty, brains, and breeding. I was nothing.   
A flash of resentment made me frown. These were not the thoughts I was supposed to have, not tonight. For one evening, I wanted to feel sophisticated, smart, lovely. I wanted to be taken out of my web of shyness, inferiority, gaucherie, and here Mrs Danvers was hemming me in again. 

“Thank you, Mrs Danvers, you’ve been very helpful. I’ll make sure to tell Clarice how to do the rest of my hair. It’ll be good for her to know.” 

Still she would not leave. She pinned another curl into place. “Clarice would not do it properly, madam,” she said. Her fingers had warmed, and there was something pleasant in the feel of them on my scalp, in her sure, strong touch. When my mother brushed my hair as a child, it had made me so relaxed I had often felt loose-jointed, like a puppet with its strings cut. Once, I had even fallen asleep as she had washed my hair, my head lolling against her arm. 

I remembered then that Maxim used to brush Rebecca’s hair for her, and felt a twinge of anguish. He never bothered with my hair. I wished he would. I craved intimacy between us, deft little touches that spoke of mutual love. Maxim hardly ever touched me. Only when we were in the library and I sat at his knees did he stroke my head, doing it absent-mindedly as he read his newspaper, and at those moments I often thought that it did not matter much that it was me he was caressing; he would have fondled Jasper in much the same way. 

“There,” Mrs Danvers said, clipping the final lock into place. She touched a little wisp of baby hair at the nape of my neck, and something low in my belly clenched. “These locks tend to be very sensitive. I can pin them up if you prefer, but they’ll be hidden by the wig.”

“Oh, please don’t bother. Thank you, Mrs Danvers, I’m sure Clarice wouldn’t be half as quick as you.” I wished the girl would come.

As if she had read my mind, Mrs Danvers said, “Mrs de Winter never allowed one of the maids to dress her. I’ve sent Clarice away.” Then, softer, her finger still lingering at my nape, “Why did you not ask me to dress you?”

I felt the blood beat in my throat. “Mrs Danvers, you shouldn’t have. You are far too busy, and I…” I don’t want you to see me, to touch me, because you always compare me to her, to Rebecca, I know you do, and then I feel so small and worthless that a part of me wishes I could cease to exist. 

“I thought this was supposed to be our little secret,” she said. Her eyes found mine in the mirror. Her face was no longer like a dead thing, hollow and pale. Her cheeks were flushed now, and suddenly I could see that she had once been quite lovely, before grief had made her gaunt and emaciated, spanning her skin tightly around her skull. And as she looked at me, she kept tracing patterns on my neck, softly, tenderly, causing little stirrings inside me of… what? Longing? Desire? 

Surely not! It was simply that I had not been touched for so long that the simple act of her hand fingering my hair, a very innocent act, business-like, transactional, seemed to my traitorous body to be imbued with great significance. 

Confused, I stood, my hip jolting the dresser. “I must get dressed. I don’t want to keep Maxim waiting,” I said. With my hip smarting I gathered up the dress, dropped it, picked it up again. Mrs Danvers appeared at my elbow. “There’s too much clutter in your dressing room, Madam,” she said, swiftly taking the dress from me and draping it over her arm, “may we retire to your bedroom? The light is better there, too. When Mr de Winter had these rooms done up before your arrival, I told him this room was too small and dark to be a proper dressing room, but he insisted.”

Because he didn’t want to use Rebecca’s rooms. They’re haunted by too many memories, remembrances that must remain inviolate, sacred. That’s why he has tucked me away in here, in these inferior, second-rate rooms, I thought, and tasted something harsh and bitter at the back of my throat. To have something to do I wandered to Maxim’s bed and smoothed an imaginary fold out of the sheets. Had Mrs Danvers never been here, I might have been embarrassed about sleeping in twin beds. Rebecca had had a double bed in her room. She dressed in silk nightgowns, thin as gossamer; slipping into one must feel like covering oneself in a thin sheet of cool water. I could see her in my mind’s eye, that tall, slender figure clad in silk the colour of apricots, and Maxim, flicking the straps down her shoulders…  
Mrs Danvers’ hand on my shoulder startled me. Instinctively I drew away from her. When I saw the look on her face, that harsh, gloating look, I wished I hadn’t. “Come, Madam. You must remove your slip. It would poke out above the bodice.”

I could cry, but I could not let her see my weakness, no matter how much she sensed it. I pulled my slip over my head, tossing it on the bed, not caring that it would crease, only wishing Mrs Danvers would not look at my belly, at the cheap brassiere I wore, at my white knickers with the fake lace. 

She helped me put on the skirts, tugging them into place, her hands hot on my hips. That strange, secret place between my legs felt tight then, and I could not explain it, not really. I wished it would not smart so. It was degrading, how my body turned traitor against my mind, this lingering longing for touch and love coming alive under my housekeeper’s hands. 

“They are slightly too big. Clarice must not have measured you right,” Mrs Danvers said, disapproval clouding her face. 

“Maybe I’ve lost some weight,” I said, remembering how Maxim had commented on it, and Beatrice, too, saying it did not suit me to be so thin. 

Mrs Danvers knelt down in front of me and drew out a little pouch from a pocket of her dress. It was a little sewing kit, two spools of thread (one black, one white), scissors, a set of needles, and a collection of pins. “Careful, or I might hurt you,” she warned me, and stuck some pins into the skirt, making it tighter. “I’ll take it in for you.”

“Oh, please don’t bother, I don’t mind, really I don’t…”

But she did not heed me. Her tongue was thin and very pink as she licked a piece of thread. She threaded her needle in one go, then set about taking in the skirt whilst I still wore it, working quickly, with stitches so small it was like fairy work. She was so close to me I could smell her, the scent of her soap, the laundry detergent the servants used for their clothing, and the sweet, intimate smell of her body. I felt her breath on my thighs, warm and even, and that space between my legs, the one I did not have a proper name for, contracted again. My legs felt very funny, very weak, and I had to put a hand on Mrs Danvers’ shoulders so as not to sway. The stuff of her dress felt queer, slippery, or perhaps my hand was simply damp. My heart was beating very hard. 

Maxim has not lain with me in three weeks, I thought. I remembered the last time. I had nearly been asleep, and then he had crept to me, sitting down on the edge of the bed, causing the mattress to dip. He had found my face in the dark, and had kissed me in a strange, hungry, desperate way. He had slipped into the bed with me, rucking up my nightgown. When he entered me I had not been quite ready yet, and had cried out. “God, my little love, how tight you are,” he had murmured, and I had not known whether that pleased him or annoyed him, whether it was something a woman would take pride or shame in. I had hoped he would slow down, be tender, but my little cry had excited him somehow, for he had thrust into me harder, faster. It had been uncomfortable, painful, even. I had thought he had been near his climax, but he had been gaining stride, not losing it, his mouth on my throat, his teeth scraping my collarbone. And then, shamefully, I had felt a thrum of pleasure, very faint. He had touched my thigh, digging his fingers into my skin, leaving his prints, and that action had caused another ripple. 

“Maxim,” I’d whispered, “please, Maxim, please…” but I had not known whether I was asking him to stop or to go on. It had not mattered anyway, for Maxim had spent himself in me then, grinding his hips against mine. I had touched his head, smoothing his hair, wishing he would kiss me, hold me, but then he had rolled away and padded back to his own bed. Soon, his breathing had evened out and I knew he was asleep. I had lain awake for a long time, though, feeling hollow and near to crying. Why, I wondered, had he come to me now? Why did not see my desire for his love writ naked on my face? It would have been better if he had embraced me, if he had told me he loved me. Then, I could have borne it, the shame of my own arousal, the way he had rutted with me although I had been half asleep. It would not have been so impersonal then. 

“There,” Mrs Danvers said. She smoothed the fabric with her thumbs, tracing the blade of my hipbone, then straightened herself. She helped me put on the bodice next. She did up hooks and buttons   
without any hesitation, working quickly. “The stockings and shoes next, then your makeup, and finally the wig. Sit down, Madam.”

“Please don’t bother, I can do it myself.”

“You wouldn’t want them too loose or too tight, Madam.” I could imagine them slithering down my leg, tangling around my ankle so that I tripped over them. How mortified Maxim would be…

“It can’t be so hard, can it, to tie a stocking?”

“You’d be surprised, Madam.” And she put her hand on my shoulder and pushed down. It did not take much strength; my legs felt like reed, all hollow. I sank down on the bed. A trace of Maxim’s smell came to me. I plucked at a loose thread of his sheets, twisting it round my finger. Mrs Danvers touched the stockings tenderly. They were white and made to fit as they would have in the time of Caroline de Winter, meaning they fastened around the thigh with a ribbon. Mrs Danvers bunched up my skirt and pushed it up. I had not shaved my thighs. Did she see how long and thick the hair grew there, how my skin was pale like a frog’s belly and marbled with veins? My face flushed so quickly the tears sprang into my eyes. 

She took my ankle in her hand, her fingers searing hot. Did she feel the gallop of my pulse in the spidery veins that lay so close under my skin? She tugged up the stocking over my ankle, my knee, and tied it quickly. She tried to wriggle a finger between my skin and the fabric and couldn’t. 

“This way it is not so tight it will hurt, but not so loose it will come undone, should you dance.” She did not remove her hand but let it linger there, palm lightly resting on the strip of skin between stocking and knickers. Then, her finger twitched and slowly, very slowly, she touched the elastic of my knicker. 

“Mrs Danvers…” 

But she would not let me finish my sentence. Perhaps it was for the best; what would I have said? “When my mistress and Mr de Winter were just married, he rode her like the devil,” she said softly. “Her knickers were stained with the seeping of their lovemaking, and often torn. He went a little wild when he was with her, but then so many men did. She had that effect on them. I used to let her underwear soak in a bucket in my room and scrub out the stains, and then I’d sew them back together again. My father was a tailor; I know how to make my stitches invisible.”

I tried to imagine Mrs Danvers as a little girl, peering over her father’s shoulder to see how one stitched a rip, but I could not imagine her as a child. 

“Mr de Winter hardly touches you.” This last a statement, not a question. I wondered, did Mrs Danvers question Clarice on my underwear, on whether my knickers needed mending? Or did she slip into my rooms herself and quest through the laundry, finding my undergarments and fingering them for stains? I had written to a shop in London and asked for a catalogue, but then Clarice had become my maid and she had not seemed to care how cheap my underwear was, and so I had not ordered any of the slippery, silky things I supposed women of my social standing should wear. I wished now that I had.  
I did not what to say. She had not said it with any menace, but it was such a personal, intimate thing that I could not stay silent. “I’m not a virgin, if that’s what you think,” I whispered, the words coming out all choked. I swallowed thickly, balling my hands into fists. “There are moments my husband does want me, you know. Moments when he takes me, doing it roughly enough to bruise, leaving me marked as his.”

She stopped stroking me and looked up. Her eyes flashed something fierce. A little lock of hair had escaped her pins and curled against her temple. When she spoke, it trembled, and that little curl shot through with grey somehow made her more human than anything. “I don’t doubt it, Madam, but is that how you like it?”

Her question threw and flustered me both. “How I like it?” I repeated stupidly. I blinked, shook my head in confusion. 

“Do you not know, Madam?” Her tongue darted between her lips, pink and wet. She stroked my thigh. “Do you like this?” She bent closer to me, her breath hot and quick, and kissed the inside of my leg, very softly. “And this?”

God forgive me, but I wanted her. I was aching with it. “Mrs Danvers,” I whispered.

She kissed me again, sucking my skin into her mouth. A hot thrill of arousal shot through me. “Mrs Danvers, you shouldn’t…”

She smiled; I could feel the tug of her lips against my skin. “Oh, Madam, I can smell you,” she murmured. “You’re wet with want, but are you willing?” 

She tugged at my knickers. I raised my hips so she could pull them off. I don’t think I thought about it; I simply did as she wished me to. She smirked. “Yes,” she said, “I’d say you are willing indeed.” She dragged my underwear down my leg and tossed it on the ground. She pushed my legs apart, seated herself between them with her hands splayed on my thighs. 

A sharp bolt of panic tore through me. What woman would sit on her husband’s bed with the housekeeper cradled between her thighs? I might have pushed her away, might have cried, but then her mouth was on me, and pleasure smote me. She dragged a strange, guttural moan out of me, the sound so shocking I put a hand in front of my mouth. The other one had found its way into her hair somehow, and though I did not wish to hurt her I could not help but squeeze as she lapped at me, as she licked and sucked and kissed. She was flaying me. It seemed to me that there was a thread coiled in my belly, and she was winding it up, pulling it taut with her tongue. It was a miracle I did not unravel into her mouth and hands. Whatever Maxim had done to me was nothing compared to what I felt now.   
When that tread of want snapped, I bit the fleshy mound of my thumb so I would not scream. She kept her tongue against me as I rode it out. When I came to myself, I realised I had yanked some of her hair out of its pins. I took my hand away from my mouth. I had left a seam in my own flesh from where I had bitten down. 

Mrs Danvers took hold of my wrist and pulled my hand out of her hair. My fingers tangled into it. I was weak with pleasure. Her lips were swollen and wet. She took the hem of my skirt and wiped her mouth on it.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have touched your hair,” I murmured.

“God, what a schoolgirl you are, always flushing and apologising.”

That hurt. “I’m sorry. It’s just that… I was overcome.”

“Of course you were. You’ve never felt anything like it before, have you? He has never made you come,” she said, and then she laughed. 

I slapped her. It happened so quickly, I don’t think I knew I was going to do it until it had already happened. For a moment neither of us spoke. We did not even move. We just sat there, she with her cheek reddening, me with my hand tingling. 

“Mrs Danvers, I am so sorry…” I began, but she would not let me finish. She stood, quick as a cat, and then she was on me. 

“How dare you,” she hissed, those long fingers of hers closing around my wrist like a vice, “how dare you, you foolish little girl?” I tried to push her away, but she was stronger. I fear there was a tussle between us then, a weird sort of scuffle. She was on top of me, pinning me to the bed, and I could smell my sweet shame on her breath. Her leg was between mine. It was thin and very long. I felt the bone shift, and could not help that my hips surged up to meet it, God, I could not help wishing to rock against her, that longing so recently sated already flaring up again. 

“Don’t, don’t, please,” I whined, but she cared nothing for my protestations, perhaps did not even hear them. 

“You’re a silly little girl, a mere child. You don’t know what you want because you’ve never dared to ask. You’re nothing like my lady, you’re nothing like Rebecca! She seized life by the throat and would not let go, she squeezed every drop of pleasure from it and still demanded more because that was her right, her due. How dare he replace her with you? You scuttle where she once strode, clutch at her things with your grubby little hands, covet what she had with those sly little eyes of yours, and you think there shall be no retribution because you think she is dead and gone…”

“Mrs Danvers, you’ve got to stop, you shouldn’t speak of these things!” I tried to put my hand over her mouth but she nearly bit me, her jaws snapping together with the sound of a jewellery box closing. 

“Not speak of these things? That would suit you, wouldn’t it? To bury my lady with silence like he is doing, pretending the past can be blotted out, that he cannot feel her in every room. Do you think I do not see? Do you think I do not feel? Do you think because I am poor and plain and merely a housekeeper that I’ve no thoughts, no desires?” It was horrible, the way she spoke, how the words came out rough and choked. I had to stop her from laying herself bare like this, but I did not know how. And all the while my legs were still wound around her, and the weight of her bearing down on me was sweet, scandalous sin. In the end I did the only thing I could think of: I grabbed a fistful of hair, yanked her head close to me, and kissed that raving mouth of hers. 

We had a completely different sort of fight then. We were joined at the hip, cleaving together, and she rode me and I rode her, the two of us panting and flushing. Her mouth stoppered mine, and I could scarcely breathe. It felt as if she wished to suck the life out of me, every little wisp of it, from my flesh and muscle, from the meat of my spine. I fought back. I licked her gums, tasting that queer taste of my unravelling, sharp like vinegar. I clawed at her back, my fingers slipping on the smooth fabric of her dress. She was so slick and fast, it was neigh impossible to hold her down, to pleat her against me and be certain in the knowledge she would not leave me. 

Her hand found its way between our bodies. She pushed a finger into me, and that was wrong, but it was also bliss. She thrust it into me.

“Goddamn you,” I panted. She added another finger. This was what Maxim did to me, invading me, but with him my body rebelled and wished to expel him, whereas it welcomed Mrs Danvers.   
She had done this before, of that there could be no doubt, but had she done it with the only one who mattered? Had she pleasured Rebecca like she pleasured me? “Did you and Rebecca…” I began.  
She curved her fingers inside me, dragged them out, and it was too much. “Don’t speak her name,” she growled. “Don’t talk about her.” She pushed her fingers back in, and I came apart. 

“Danny,” I moaned. I could not help it. “Danny, goddamn, Danny…”

I had hoped she’d go easy on me now that my muscles rippled and clenched around her digits, but it seemed to excite her, for she set a quicker, harder pace, almost brutal, dancing on the edge where pain becomes pleasure and pleasure becomes pain. She added the weight of her hips behind her hand, thrusting more fiercely. I clutched her shoulder. When I came a second time, I bit at her face, her cheek, her chin, her jaw, and she had to grab me by the throat and push my face down against the covers. My hairpins dug into my scalp. I smelled Maxim then, that rugged, masculine scent of cigarettes and dogs and leather. If I had not been so afraid, so desperately passive, would I have gone to him on one of the many nights we had spent here at Manderley? Would I have slipped between these covers and put my hand on his manhood to feel it stir? Would I have straddled him, plunging him inside me? Would I have wished for him to flip me on my belly and take me from behind, my face buried in his sheets as it was now?

Why did I have to think about that now? And why did it make my belly clench, why did it make me shiver and sweat all over, the ripples of orgasm tugging at my consciousness? When I had ridden out my third climax, Mrs Danvers stopped squirming against me. “I knew you’d flush from nipple to crown when you come,” she laughed. She pulled her fingers from me and pushed them against my lips, her nails clicking against my teeth. “Don’t you dare bite me,” she said. I had nicked her jaw, I saw; a little trickle of blood had come down her throat. 

I took her fingers in my mouth and sucked the silty wetness from it. When I was done, she took a handkerchief out of her pocket and dabbed it between my legs. I flinched; I was very sensitive. She took the sodden handkerchief and wiped it on my throat, smearing my desire into the little bluish hollow at the base of it. “My mistress used to do this before every party. The men would smell it on her, and trail after her like dogs. I’ll wash my hands now. Go sit at your vanity so I can pin up your hair again and make up your face.” 

She went into the bathroom. I could hear her fiddle with the taps and let the water splash into the basin. I came to my feet. My legs trembled. I had to hold on to the bed to keep from falling, and lean on the furniture as I made my way back to the dressing room.

The face that looked back at me from the mirror was not my own. It was flushed, with sparkling eyes. Mrs Danvers had bruised my throat. My hair had come down in damp little locks that curled against my cheeks. I began to take out the pins. My fingers felt queer and wouldn’t do what I wished them to do so that I dropped pin after pin.

Mrs Danvers came to me after a little while. She had wiped away the blood at her jawline and pinned her hair back up. She had brought a wet flannel for me. “Press this against your throat,” she said, and her voice was without animation again, the voice of someone not quite alive. She took my hairbrush and without a word began to brush my hair. Her hands were cold from the water. She helped me fasten my hair to my scalp and put on the wig, then painted my mouth for me and powdered away the bruises at my throat. She was very cool, very efficient, not at all like the impassioned woman of half an hour ago.

“All done, Madam,” she said.

I could not look her in the eye. “Thank you, Mrs Danvers. I suppose I should go downstairs. They’re probably waiting for me.”

At the door she stopped me. “Madam, you shouldn’t,” she said, and there was an urgency to her words, a simple sort of honesty. Then, the mask slipped back into place. “You’ve forgotten your hat.”

I stared at the beribboned thing. “You’re right, so I have.” I took it out of its box. 

“I’d keep it in your hand if I were you,” she said. “It would crush the curls.”

“Indeed.” 

I stepped out into the hallway. I was no longer excited. I just felt tired, drained. But Maxim will see you and adore you, and then all shall be well. You can forget about Mrs Danvers and all she did to you, all you wanted her to do to you. You need not think about Rebecca, and whether Mrs Danvers pleasured her. You can push it all away, down where all the hurtful things go. It can be your secret indulgence. 

Afterwards, when Maxim had roared at me and sent me back up in front of everyone as if I was a naughty child, after I had locked myself into my room, my eyes red and raw from weeping but my mind a little clearer, I felt a new thought intrude on my grief. It was an insidious little thought, snagging into my mind like a thorn, humiliating me further, and it would not be pushed down, it would not be indulged in secretly: had Mrs Danvers only lain with me because I had been dressed like Rebecca?


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The narrator deals with the aftermath of her disastrous costume choice for the Manderley ball.

**A/N: The sequel to ‘Careful, Madam’. Is this self-indulgent angsty smut? Yes it is. Did I have a blast writing it? Yes indeed!**

Maxim did not look at me during the fancy dress party, not even once. I stood next to him for the entire evening, smiling at our guests until my jaws quivered. All the while I looked at my husband from the tail of my eye. No one would have known that something was wrong, for he held his head high, flung quips to the occasional guest, laughed. Only I saw the faint lines around his mouth and eyes, thin like gossamer, and the peculiar way he smiled, more like a twisting of the lips, a baring of the teeth, than a genuine expression of mirth.

And it was all my fault.

I felt small and desperate, sick with shame. If only he would glance at me, or find my hand and clutch it into his, then I’d know things could become all right between us again. If only I had the courage to link my arm with his and draw him away from the party into that little room that could be accessed from the hallway, where the shears and mackintoshes were kept. It would be cool there, and private, and I could tell him that my choice of costume had been wretched and vile, but not intentionally so. I could cry there, and through my tears beg his forgiveness. He might take me in his arms then, and the feel of the long, hard lines that made up his body would blot out the feel of that other one, who had bruised and pleasured me before humiliating me, who had left me sore…

But I dared not move, and Maxim never reached for me. He kept swallowing, as if something had gotten stuck in his throat and he wished to dislodge it. It harped on my nerves, that soft, sucking motion inside his throat, and for one fierce, dreadful moment, I thought how much I would like to crush the bulge of his Adam’s apple with my fist. I imagined the cartilage bending against my knuckles, the soft, wet sounds that would accompany it. The rage I felt and the satisfaction at the image of my hand compressing his throat frightened me more than my growing fear that our marriage was a failure.

I had to walk away then. I locked myself into a bathroom and threw up. The bitter bile splashing into the toilet bowl brought no relief. I went to the sink to wash my hands. I ran the tap till the water was cold and drank from it to rinse my mouth, but the taste of sick lingered. I wiped my mouth on a bit of toilet paper, then peered into the mirror. Mrs Danvers had done an impeccable job with my makeup.

_Don’t think of her._

I sat down on the lip of the tub, my hands like melting ice, all wet and cold. I had a nagging little pain in the pit of my stomach that throbbed in time with my heartbeat. It was good to sit there in the soft overhead light and nurse that pain, to try and feel it to the exclusion of all else. But as I sat shivering on the hard rim of the bathtub, I could not stop feeling the soreness between my legs, or the ghost of long, lean fingers tracing patterns at the nape of my neck. I could not stop thinking, either, could not help spinning one scenario after another, until they formed a bleak tapestry in my mind big enough to smother me with.

I went back to the sink and washed my hands. The soap had a hair on it. _I should tell Mrs Danvers about that. How she’d hate for Manderley standards to slip,_ I thought, and then I remembered what she had done, and the pain made me flinch.

I wiped my hands on my skirt. Then, I went back to the party.

…

By the time the final guests had left, I was so bone-weary I might have curled up on the carpet and slept like a dog. Instead, I dragged myself to my room and crawled into bed without bothering to change my frock for pyjamas.

Sleep would not come. Dawn had broken, but the room stayed dark. Mrs Danvers must have closed the curtains then, folding one end over the other, allowing not a single ray of light to penetrate.

I wished Maxim would come up. I had to talk to him. I lay on my side, staring at his bed. Had Mrs Danvers and I stained the sheets? Perhaps, if Maxim were to come up and crawl into bed, he would catch my scent, a whiff of something so primal it could not help but move him. That is, if Mrs Danvers had not stripped the bed and put on fresh sheets, bunching up the ones we had dirtied between her beautiful hands. No; normally the maids took care of soiled linen and bedding. They were the ones who did the laundry, scrubbing cotton and wool until they were raw-handed and red-knuckled. Unless, of course, the laundry was Rebecca’s. In that case Mrs Danvers did it. She washed her mistress’ blouses, her nightgowns, her slips. She washed her underthings, letting them soak in a bucket of water in her room before taking a bar of soap to them. She mended them, too, when they had holes in them, or stitching that had become undone, or tears from eager hands. Her father had been a tailor. That explained how she could thread her needle with such confidence, wetting the thread with her tongue, all pink and warm…

“Please,” I whispered in the dark, “please, may I stop thinking now?” But the thoughts and memories kept coming, blurring into each other until I thought I’d go mad.

Maxim’s face, tight with anger, his eyes blazing.

Mrs Danvers’ fingers hopping between the dips of my vertebrae.

A figure with a shock of dark hair around her lovely face, smiling triumphant from the shadows of the minstrel’s gallery.

I flung the sheets away from me and got to my feet. I was no Catholic, but even I knew how one ought to rid themselves of a demon that tormented them, even one as insubstantial as the monster that rode me, made up of half-truths and conjectures. You had to exorcise it.

…

I seemed to reach Rebecca’s room in no time at all. One minute I was in my dressing room, and the next I had opened the door to hers. It was dark here, too, the curtains drawn and folded by an expert hand. I fumbled for the light switch and could not find it. I remembered then that there was a lamp near the bed, and I stumbled there, my hands stretched out in front of me as if this was a game of blind man’s buff. The room smelled musty, as rooms that are not used are wont to do, yet I could not help shake the feeling that I was not alone. There was this subtle disturbance of the atmosphere, impossible to describe but sensed nonetheless. I feared that any moment someone might clasp my outstretched hand, or thump me between the shoulder blades to make me stumble. Perspiration trickled down my back.

I bumped into something hard and cried out, thrusting my arms in front of me. My hands sank down into something soft. I was half-crazed by fear then, and it took me a moment to realise I had bumped into the bed and was touching the quilted cover and the mattress underneath. I felt my way from there to the nightstand and found the lamp. I was trembling so much I did not manage to switch it on straight away. When it came on, I had to shield my eyes with my arm. After a little while, when my eyes had gotten used to the light and I was not breathing so hard anymore, I felt strong enough to walk to the dresser with its brushes, its bottles of scent and powder. I sat myself down. My reflection looked back at me. This other self was pale and wan, with uncombed hair that was sweat-darkened at the roots. I sat and looked, the lamp burning softly behind me, the blood beating in my throat.

I had heard of people entrancing themselves by looking into mirrors or, alternatively, a bowl or salver with water. I had never believed it to be possible, but after a while I began to feel quite queer. The nagging pain, that lingering nausea that I had nursed throughout the night, began to fade, and it seemed to me that I was not properly aligned with my body anymore; I was still tethered to it, but floating a little behind. My reflection began to morph and flicker, until it was no longer my own face but that of another, someone tall and lovely, with dark hair.

“You must leave,” I told her.

“Oh, but you have only just conjured me up.”

I licked my lips. They were dry and flaking. “I want you to leave me in peace. I want you to stop haunting me, to stop haunting Maxim.”

She smiled. Soft little shivers shook me. I knew now why men went off their heads around her, why Mrs Danvers would keep these rooms pristine to entomb her memory, why Maxim could not speak of her. “He does not wish me to go. He loves me.”

I gripped my seat hard and bent closer to her. “You do not understand. He’s the only one I have, and I’ll do anything to be the wife he wishes me to be.”

“But what wife would do the things you’ve done with Danny?” she whispered. “Those filthy, sordid things? What wife would want a woman between her thighs, or inside her? What wife would enjoy that?”

I felt very faint then, very weak. “No,” I said, “No!”

“You’ve let your housekeeper fuck you three months into your marriage. Do you truly think people whose marriages are a success would do such a thing?”

I tugged at a flake of skin with my teeth, tearing it away. There was pain, but not at all sharp, not as it should have been. I tasted copper. “I love Maxim,” I choked.

“If you truly loved him, you would leave. You would give him back to me, so that we can be together. You know that’s what he wants.”

I could not deny this. A sob clawed its way up my throat. The sound was oddly muted. _Perhaps,_ I thought, _I have ceased to exist. Perhaps Rebecca has conquered me at last, subsumed me, and I am the shadow and the ghost and she the woman of flesh and blood. That is why Maxim has not come to me, and why no one is looking for me; they’ve forgotten me already._ Who would remember a person as insignificant, as drab and colourless as me?

She smiled at me. “You know what you have to do,” she said, and her voice was soft now, near fawning.

“Yes,” I said.

“It will be quite painless.”

“Yes.”

“It’ll be quick, not at all like the lingering death of those who drown. There’ll be the snap of your neck, and then it will all be over.”

I stood and smoothed my skirt. “You’ll look after him, won’t you? And he’ll be happy again, won’t he?”

Again that smile, like that of an angel. “Of course.”

“And… and Mrs Danvers? You’ll look after her, too?”

“Like she has looked after me.”

“That’s all right, then.” I went to the window and opened it, struggling with the sash; my hands had gone numb. A sea mist had come rolling in during the night, hiding the sun. The morning light was yellow, filthy, very muted. I licked my lips and tasted bitter salt. I peered down and found I could not see the ground. All I had to do was clamber out of the window and let myself drop, but my arms were weak and I found I could not lift myself. I leaned hard against the window seat, feeling it dig into my belly, just below the ribs. I need only lean forward, and if I bent far enough, the earth would pull me down. It would rush to meet me, and there’d be no pain. I need only…

A hand closed around my arm and yanked me back. The force of it spun me round. My hands scrabbled against black cloth smooth as water, impossible to take a proper hold of. Mrs Danvers grabbed my wrists. Her hands were cold.

It is hard to describe the shock of her touch. To be grabbed by someone when we think ourselves alone is enough to make one’s heart thump painfully; when we are entranced, any touch is almost a violation. Her grip tightened, grinding the bones in my wrist together, and I was corporeal again, no longer the shadow and the ghost I had feared myself to be.

“No!” I screamed, “No, no, no, let me go!”

“I can’t, Madam.”

“Let me go!”

“Hush, Madam, don’t shout so, or the servants will hear,” she murmured. I looked into her face. Her eyes were red-rimmed, swollen. She had a little scab on her jawline from where I had nicked her skin with my teeth the night before.

“What do you care?” I hissed. “What do you care if they hear? You hate me! And I’ve done nothing to deserve it.”

Her hands quivered, and she began to cry. It was horrible; I felt her body shake, saw the sobs tear through her, yet no tears would come. “Do you think I don’t know I went too far? That it was a low trick to play, vulgar and common? But you tried to take my mistress’ place,” she moaned.

“I never did!” The pain in my belly was sharp now, like a knife scraping my insides. “I changed nothing at Manderley. I let everything go on as it had when she was still alive. I can’t ever take her place.” Those traitorous tears burned behind my eyelids. I tried to blink them away, but they would not be denied. “I can’t compare to her, to Rebecca. I know this. Everyone does; Maxim, you, Frith, they all know I’m nothing like her.” I felt so weak then I could hardly stand. I had to lean against the windowsill. Mrs Danvers must have thought I was trying to break away from her, for she increased her grip. Her hands were warming now.

“You mustn’t shout so,” she repeated.

“You played a vile trick on me, Mrs Danvers,” I went on. “You wished to hurt me, and you have.”

Mrs Danvers shook her head. She had not done up her hair properly; a little lock curled against her temple. “I wanted to hurt him, not you.”

I wished to rub my eyes, but she would not let me. “Has Mr de Winter not suffered enough?”

She began to laugh, and that was worse than her crying. The sound was raw and hollow. It made the hairs on my nape prick up. “He tried to replace her not even a year after she’d gone. He married you, an absolute child. You’re passive and immature, desperate for affection, completely dependent on him, and no one sees it.”

“But they do! I know they talk about me. They compare me to Rebecca, and they find me wanting. They all…”

“Oh, they talk about you all right. They think you seduced him and he married you because he’s a gentleman. They don’t see that he chose himself an impressionable little child-bride to obey and sate him.”

“Stop, Mrs Danvers, please stop!” I cried. “It’s not like that at all.”

“Oh, but it is. He married you, a pretty little girl, because he wants someone to play with, someone to fawn over him, someone…”

“God, Mrs Danvers,” I sobbed, the tears coming hot and fast, my face tight with it, “do you not see that he’s all I have in the whole wide world? That there’s no one else to call my own, no one who loves me? You can’t know what that feels like.”

“But I do, I…”

“I’ll take whatever love he deigns to give me, no matter how small. And it is hard, Mrs Danvers, to know that he does not love me like he loved her, that he finds me wanting whenever he thinks of me because I am second-rate and inferior and insignificant. I have so much love to give, if only people would let me. I’ve only my husband to give it to. I must love, Mrs Danvers, or else be destroyed. I must love. Let me love, let me love…”

I was raving. I knew that I was, but I could not help it. I was clutching Mrs Danvers, feeling her heat, smelling that sweet little scent of hers, and I kept begging her with that stunted little phrase, over and over again. “Let me love you, let me love you, please, let me love you…”

She put her mouth on mine. I could taste bitter tea on her tongue. Her lips were warm and wet. A shock tore through me, and I began to tremble. She tore her mouth away from mine, hugged me close to her, a hand on the back of my head. My nose was pressed against her throat. I began to kiss her there, soft, hungry kisses, reddening her skin.

“Let me love you,” I babbled.

“I will, Madam. Now hush.”

I was feeling very weak. I leaned against her. She held me close with one arm. “Careful for your hands, Madam; I’m going to close the window now,” she said, and with her free hand brought down the sash.

I was still clinging to her. I tried to open the buttons of her collar, but she drew my hands away. She guided me to the bed then and lay me down. The stale scent of azaleas rose to meet us, and with a stab of panic I thought how wrong it was for me to touch these sheets. “The mirror,” I said, clasping Mrs Danvers’ hands, “you must cover up the mirror or she’ll see, and she mustn’t.”

She kissed my forehead, her fingers lingering there for a moment as she checked my temperature. Then, she took the quilt off the bed, went to the mirror, and carefully covered it up. When she came back to me, I was so desperate for the feel of her that I drew her down with me, kissing her lean hands, her veined wrists, her cheeks and chin and nose. I pulled at the pins in her hair and down it came, thick as rope and warm. She looked younger with her hair down, more human, and I found I could imagine her as a girl after all. I twisted on top of her and we were joined again, cleaving together at the hip. She rucked up my skirt and then her own. There was a flash of red, and I saw she was wearing a scarlet slip under her black dress. She wound her legs around my waist. She wore boots that buttoned up over the ankle, their heels digging into my flesh. I saw her in my mind’s eye, sitting on the edge of her simple bed at the end of the day, working away at her boots with a button hook.

I kept kissing her. My lips felt raw, flayed, and still I could not get enough. I knew what would soothe them. The thought made me tremble.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I want to kiss you between your legs,” I confessed.

She trembled then, too. She closed her eyes, passed a hand over her face. When she opened her eyes, she pushed me off of her, and for one terrible moment I thought she’d deny me after all, and the idea of it was so terrible I had to press my hands against my belly to stop the pain there. But no, she was pulling up her skirts to the waist now, revealing her stockinged legs and then the red underwear she wore. It was trimmed with lace, very lovely. Her stockings were real silk. I had never given much thought to Mrs Danvers’ stockings, but had I been pressed, I would have said she wore scratchy, woollen affairs that were wont to give one varicose veins eventually. I would never have guessed she had an appetite for the luxurious, but then I never would have imagined us twining like lovers, either.

The skin between stocking and knickers was white. She had a puckered purple scar on the right thigh, a line the length of my finger. She drew her underwear down. The hair that grew on her mound was dark and strangely soft, very unlike the coarse, bristling hair that grew between my legs. She had trimmed it carefully. I thought of her taking her nail scissors and a hand mirror into the bathroom every other week, folded between her towel so that no one need see. She’d spread out a newspaper on the cold tiles and sit down, the mirror propped up against the wall so she could see herself. I imagined her twisting the hair around her fingers to measure it before she snipped it off. Afterwards, she’d brush the hair into a little heap with her palms, and fold the newspaper around it. She’d turn it into a little package, indistinguishable from the twists of paper the maids used to light the fires, and toss it into the hearth.

She spread her legs for me then, and her skin seemed to split, like a seam unravelling, revealing the pink, damp flesh inside. I smelled her then, that fierce, feminine scent of a woman’s desire, so very different from a man’s. It made my belly clench.

“Mrs Danvers?” I whispered.

“Yes, Madam?”

“You’ll be patient with me, won’t you?”

She worked herself up on her elbows and placed her hand against my cheek. Her palm was warm and slightly calloused. “Of course, Madam.”

I did what she had done to me the night before. I lay down on my belly, put her legs over my shoulder, and kissed her soft flesh.

She hissed.

Startled, I drew back.

“Careful, Madam,” she bade me, stroking my hair, “you must be gentle with me.”

I dared hardly touch her then, until she pressed my mouth against her more firmly. I kissed and licked and sucked as she demanded, changing my rhythm when she asked. All the while her hand was on my head, her fingers stroking my scalp in little stutters. My tongue found this hard little nub of flesh, and my little licks against it made her moan. At one point she began to flow, and the taste of her was rich and sharp, like brine, like vinegar and copper. _She’s an oyster,_ I thought, _and I’ve found the pearl inside._

Her thighs trembled against my face. When she came, I felt the twitch of muscle inside her, felt her climax shake through her. Her hips moved against me, smearing my mouth and chin. When she stilled, I crawled up against her. She tucked me under her arm. I put a hand on her chest. Her heart was beating very fast, and she was out of breath.

“Did I do well?” I asked.

She took a lock of hair that lay plastered against my cheek between her fingers and tucked it behind my ear. “Very well indeed, Madam.”

I was calmer now, and very tired. I think I might have fallen asleep, but Mrs Danvers wouldn’t let me. “I’ll run a bath for you,” she said as she wiped my face with her handkerchief. Her cheeks were flushed.

She did not take me into Rebecca’s bathroom, but into one that belonged to a guestroom. It had a claw-footed tub and a spout in the shape of a lion’s head. A pink sheet of glass had been fitted over the lightbulb, bathing the room in a soft, sweet light. Everything was spotlessly clean. I wondered how many hours of work were put into Manderley’s empty rooms, how many pairs of hands scrubbed and dusted and brushed things Maxim and I never used.

Mrs Danvers turned on the taps, placing her sensitive fingers under the stream of water to check its temperature. There was a jar of bath salts in the medicine cabinet. She plunged her dry hand in and sprinkled the grains into the tub. Soon, the water was frothing, smelling like lavender and roses.

I began to undress. My stockings were filthy, and I had torn the heel of one. Mrs Danvers came to me and helped me, her damp fingers quickly opening hooks and buttons. Despite all we had done with each other, I still felt embarrassed for her to see me in any state of undress, and stood hugging myself so she need not see my breasts. They were strangely sensitive. She placed a flat hand on my belly.

“You should try not to lose any more weight, Madam,” she said.

Perhaps she was right. My skirts tended to be too loose around the hips nowadays. My monthlies had become irregular, too.

The bath was scalding hot. I had to lower myself into the water inch by inch. It was good to sit there quietly, hugging my legs to my chest and resting my cheek on my chin, letting the water lap at me. Mrs Danvers had found a porcelain jug somewhere. She dipped it into the bath and poured the water over my neck, my shoulders, my head, shielding my eyes with her free hand. She poured a dram of shampoo in her hand and worked it into my hair. She worked quickly, deftly.

“You used to do this with Rebecca,” I said.

She paused, then filled the jug with water. “Yes, Madam, I did. Close your eyes.” She wiped some foam from my brow, then began to rinse the shampoo out of my hair.

“And what we did before? Did you do that with Rebecca, too?”

She was quiet for a long time, her hands squeezing water and shampoo from my hair. The longer the question between us remained unanswered, the bigger it seemed to grow, like a canker untreated. It pressed down on my stomach and made it hard to breathe. When she finally answered, her voice was soft and slow, not quite the dead thing it often was but not fully alive, either. “Occasionally, when she tired of her men, she’d come to me.”

“Her men?”

“She did not love Mr de Winter exclusively, not my lady, and why should she? Men used to throw themselves at her feet and worship her. It was tiresome, really, to see them sniffing at her heels like dogs. ‘As if I’m a bitch in heat, Danny,’ she used to tell me. She liked to play with them, laugh at them, but sometimes they tired her. She scorned them all, then, and she’d come to me. She had this… this device, made of India rubber, so that we could love one another as a man and a woman, so you see, we were never quite free of men after all.”

I was very tired. I leaned my temple against her arm. She had rolled up her sleeves. Her forearms were as pale as the skin on her thighs. She had a scar on the inside of her elbow, a thin, purple line.

She smoothed my hair against my scalp. “I must fetch you a clean frock, Madam, but I am loath to leave you on your own. Will you manage? I’ll only be a little while.”

“I shall be all right. Please don’t fret about me.”

She gave my arm a little squeeze, and then she was gone.

I sank back in the water, the lip of the tub digging in the tender spot where skull meets vertebrae, chewing over the things Mrs Danvers had just told me.

Rebecca had not been faithful to Maxim.

She had had other men, and she had been intimate with Mrs Danvers, too. Perhaps I was not such a beastly woman after all, then.

When Mrs Danvers came back, she brought me clean clothes as well as a little tray. It had a plate of biscuits on it, an apple, and a glass of milk. I took the glass. It felt peculiar between my pruned-up fingers. The milk smelled strongly. I took a small sip, expecting the ordinary chalky taste of milk, but it was sour, nauseating.

“You do not want it?”

“It’s gone off.”

She sniffed it, then drank. “It tastes fine to me, Madam, but if you do not want it, you don’t need to drink it down.” She gave me a biscuit, then began paring the apple with the knife. She looked up and gave me a little smile. “You must eat.”

To please her I took a bite of biscuit. I chewed on it slowly, swallowed it. My stomach roared to life. I had another biscuit, and a third, then ate the apple. Mrs Danvers washed her hands and wetted a flannel under the tap. She put her foot on the toilet bowl, hoisted up her skirts, and began to scrub between her legs. She had another line on the back of her thigh. It was an angry purple, and quite deep. Had she had an accident at some point that had left her scarred? There could be accidents that left large parts of the body intact but gouged lines in others, like falling through a window and slicing oneself on the glass, or perhaps being thrown by a horse on jagged rocks.

“It was a riding crop,” she said.

I blinked. “I’m sorry?”

She followed the scar on the back of her leg with her finger. “A riding crop did this.” She went back to cleaning herself up.

I’ll never know if I would have asked her why someone had whipped her, had we only been given more time. Before I could decide to ask, the air was rent asunder with a bang that made the tepid water in the tub ripple and shiver, and then another one.

“What was that?” I asked, the biscuit in my hand squeezed into small shards.

Mrs Danvers put her foot down and smoothed her skirts over her legs. “Rockets. A ship in distress. It’s the fog. She must’ve run aground.”


	3. Chapter 3

Mrs Danvers helped me out of the tub and began to towel me dry. “Your husband,” she said as she rubbed the towel between my toes, “shall go down to the wreck and see if he can be of assistance. I must make myself useful, too.”

I put a hand on her shoulder. “But why?”

She looked up at me. “Because Mr de Winter might bring the crew here. They’ll need to be fed. Perhaps they need to sleep here, too. Some might require medical assistance. There’s no saying with a wreck.”

“Oh.”

That strange, tender woman I had made love to had retreated once more, and now she was brusque, business-like, efficient. The woman dressed in silk stockings and scarlet slips I might have asked about her scars; the Manderley housekeeper I could not.

She misconstrued my unease, for she straightened, rested her palm against my cheek, and said, “You needn’t worry, Madam. It won’t touch you, I promise. I’ll give orders for the library to be readied for you. Unless you wish to sleep a little?”

I shook my head. “No. The library will do. Thank you, Mrs Danvers.”

“Shall you be able to dress yourself, Madam? Only I must see to the servants.”

I mustn’t show her I was hurt. I turned my face away from her and nursed that throbbing spot of nausea inside of me so I need not feel the disappointment, the yearning, the desire. “Of course. I won’t keep you.”

She went with silent step, already lost to me. Or so I thought; on the threshold she turned and rushed back to me. She did not falter, did not doubt, but clasped my face between her lean hands and kissed me. “Fear not,” she whispered, and I did not know what she wished me not to fear, and I did not care.

When she was gone I dressed myself and brushed my wet hair. Mrs Danvers had whisked away my dirty clothes. Would she, I wondered, mend that tear in the heel of my stocking for me?

Frith was in the hall downstairs. “Good morning, Madam,” he said. Did he think it unrespectable of me to walk around with wet hair? I realised that I did not mind if he did.

“Did you hear the rockets?” I asked.

“Indeed, Madam. Robert and I were just talking about it, wondering where exactly she has run aground. The fog does strange things to sound.”

“Yes. Yes it does, Frith.”

“A good thing we had none of that last night, or we shouldn’t have been able to see the fireworks. A good thing, too, that she did not run ashore then, or we should never have heard her call of distress.”

“Mr de Winter…?”

“Has gone to see if he can be of help, Madam.”

I was so tired I saw black spots dancing in front of my vision. I put a hand out to steady myself. Frith took hold of my elbow. “Steady, Madam. Are you not well?”

“I don’t know,” I confessed.

He guided me to a chair. I sank down heavily and sat with my head lowered until the clusters of darkness faded. I half expected Frith to bring me smelling salts, but he did no such thing, simply standing at my side, ready to run to my every command.

“I’m better now,” I said after a while.

“It’s the excitement,” he said.

“It’s the heat, this beastly heat. Why won’t it rain?”

“Shall I get you a glass of brandy, Madam?”

I shook my head. “No. No, Frith, I’m quite all right now.” I pushed a wet lock of hair behind my ear. “I shall be in the library. Please tell Mr de Winter to come find me there once he’s home.”

He nodded. “Madam.”

The library was cool, pleasantly so. I sat down on the sofa, feeling tired and drawn. The fancy dress ball seemed to have taken place a long time ago, but not even a full day had passed. I still had to apologise to Maxim. Strange; it was no longer such a pressing need. Perhaps I was simply too tired to think.

Despite everything, I must’ve slept then. When I woke, the mist had gone. The sky was bruised, still that filthy yellow colour that heralded a storm. The library had grown hot. I opened the windows, put my hands on the sill and leaned out. The air was oppressive, thick. There could be no tea on the lawn that afternoon, no raspberries and cream under the chestnut tree. I smelled the cloying scent of roses mixed with the bitter salt of the sea, strong enough to make my stomach spasm. My senses had heightened at Manderley; before, I had not such an acute sense of smell, nor such a sensitivity to scent. When I withdrew from the window, my palms left damp prints on the sill.

I thought to ring for tea, but then the door opened and Maxim came in.

His mouth was drawn, his face haggard. His skin had taken on a strange greyish hue I had only ever seen in the very sick or dying. We locked eyes. For a moment we simply stood and stared, taking the other in. Then he rubbed his face in that unselfconscious way that men have, roughly and all knuckle. The spell broken, I found I could move.

“Maxim,” I said.

“It’s over,” he said.

“What’s over, darling? How grey and tired you look. Come, you must sit.” I went to him and touched his arm, but he would not be guided. He went to the open window instead, picking up the ashtray on his way, and lit a cigarette. He smoked it quickly, eagerly, and with it some colour came back into his face so that it was no longer a waxen mask. I went to stand with him, unsure of whether to touch him, whether my affection would be welcome.

“You must forgive me,” I said.

“Forgive you?” he asked, staring at the cigarette held between his beautiful fingers. “What must I forgive you for?”

“My choice of dress. I swear I didn’t know Rebecca wore the same thing last year. If I had, I’d never have chosen it. It was a mix-up, a rotten, damnable mix-up.”

He crushed the cigarette in the ashtray. “I was very angry with you, wasn’t I?”

“Dreadfully so.”

He smiled. “Funny. It’s not important anymore.”

I didn’t know what to do with him. He seemed a stranger to me. “Maxim, darling, what has happened? Why are you acting like this, so strange, so funny? Was it terrible, the wreck? Is that it? Please, you must talk to me.”

“They found Rebecca’s boat,” he said. “The ship from Hamburg came too close to the shore and hit it full on. It’s wrecked, the ship is, though none of the crew were harmed. They couldn’t have known, of course; she was underwater.”

A twisting deep inside of me. “But how? I thought she was lost at sea, not near the shore.”

“Yes. That’s what everyone thought, that Rebecca took the boat out sailing in a storm and perished. Only now they’ve found her boat, and worse, they’ve found a body, and now all shall come in the open.”

Despite the heat, my hand and feet were numb and cold. “A body? I don’t understand. She went sailing with another? Oh, Maxim, how dreadful, how…”

He opened his mouth and began to laugh. It was a horrible sound, all rough and hollow. It petered out into a hoarse chuckle, only to start up again, louder and more forceful than before. On and on it went. I thought I should go mad, listening to that deranged laughter.

“Maxim, don’t,” I begged, and tried to put my hands over his mouth. “Darling, please don’t laugh, you shouldn’t laugh…”

He grabbed my wrists and pulled my hands away. He looked at me. His eyes were bloodshot, the irises rimmed with white, like those of a wild animal. I thought of him then as he had been on that mountaintop in Monte Carlo, when I had thought him to be not quite sane and had feared he might push me over the precipice. He looked like that now, even more so.

“You’re scaring me,” I whispered.

“You don’t understand, now do you? Of course you don’t. You live in your own little head, and no one is allowed in there, not even me, your own husband. Rebecca’s boat was not lost at sea, and she wasn’t sailing with another. I killed her. I killed Rebecca.”

And he told me.

He told me how their marriage had been a farce from the start, how she had made a deal with him to bring Manderley to glory if allowed her freedom, how her infidelities had tormented him. He told me how he had gone to the boathouse that night to scare her and her lover with the gun, and how he had found her alone. With his deep, calm voice he told me how she had confessed her pregnancy, and how he had shot her and then disposed of her.

I listened, feeling more numb all the while. It was as if I was dreaming. Soon, I’d wake up, and none of this madness would’ve happened. These things didn’t happen to me. You read about them in newspapers sometimes, but they never happened to one personally, not even to people one knew.

“But now it is all over,” Maxim went on, “They’ve found her, and they’ll know. She’s only bones, but there are things there to identify her, her rings… If only I had never identified that poor, unnamed woman as my wife…”

“It was a mistake,” I said automatically. “You must say it was a mistake. Corpses that have been in the water for so long, they’re unrecognisable, aren’t they? And you were mad with grief.”

He frowned, and then he laughed again. “Mad with grief? Did you think I loved her? I’ve never cared for her. I hated her. She was a vicious little bitch. She wasn’t even normal, rutting with men and women alike. But you, my little love, my darling…”

 _If he ever finds out about Mrs Danvers and me,_ I thought, and it was a clear thought, thin and swift, _he’ll break my neck._

He began to kiss me, hungry little kisses, nipping at my lips. I stood like a dummy in his arms. I felt his mouth on mine, his breath, his arms tight around my body like winding sheets, yet the sensations were curiously dulled.

 _He’s doing it to someone else,_ I thought. Then, _I wished he was doing it to someone else._

He noticed my stiffness and thrust me away from him, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “It’s too late,” he said, “I’ve left it too late. You don’t care for me now.” He began to pace, muttering under his breath.

“Maxim,” I whispered.

He looked at me, and now he truly was a stranger. My feelings returned, the strongest of them fear. “Why did you not tell me sooner?” I whispered.

“Do you think it’s an easy thing to admit, that my wife slept around like a cheap slut? Do you not understand how ashamed I was, and still am?”

I forced myself to go to him. I put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry.” I kissed him with a dry mouth, wishing that I felt nothing. He tasted of smoke, of hunger. He put his arms around me and fell to kissing me again. His hands roamed over my body, squeezing and grasping, all done roughly.

“God,” he moaned, “how I want you. I must have you, my girl.” He moved me to the windowsill.

“Maxim, no!” I gasped. “Not here, the servants…”

“Servants be damned!” he growled. “I must have you, I simply must.”

I felt so weak I could hardly stand. I stumbled, leaned heavily against him, my wet fingers clutching at his shirt. Those dark spots were back. I trembled. I could hardly keep my head up, it was so heavy. “I’m not well. Please, I’m not well,” I said, and started to cry.

He clasped my face with both hands and made me look at him. What he read in my face must have convinced him, for he helped me to the sofa. I curled up, feeling faint and weak and sick. I couldn’t stop shaking.

“This must have come as a shock to you. I understand,” he said. He rang for a servant, then poured himself a drink. He came to sit with me, the sofa dimpling under his weight. His hand was hot as he stroked my face. Not even a day ago I would have welcomed this sudden sign of intimacy, this little bit of affection, but I was not the girl of yesterday anymore. I was so much older now I might as well have lived another ten years. His hot, demanding hand revolted me now, yet I had to convince him somehow that this sudden illness was not his doing, or else he might suspect, he might know how I feared him.

“I’ve been feeling poorly for weeks now,” I murmured. “I just feel so nauseous all the time, and I can’t eat…” My teeth were chattering. I pressed my hand against my jaw to make them stop.

His hand stopped petting me. “Nauseous? For weeks?”

I nodded; I couldn’t speak.

The door opened with a soft snick. I could not see who it was, and I did not care; as long as there was someone with us, he would not harm me.

“Ah, there you are,” Maxim said. “Mrs de Winter is feeling unwell. Help her to her room, will you? She must rest. I’ll call the doctor.”

“Sir.”

Gooseflesh erupted over my body. It was Mrs Danvers.

“I’m not that ill,” I whispered.

He leaned over me, kissed me with his wet mouth tasting of drink. “I don’t think you are, my little darling. Far from it.” His face, so gaunt and hollow and cruel half an hour before, had come alive now. It seemed to burn with a desperate, triumphant happiness that I didn’t understand.

“What are you talking about?”

He rocked in his heels, rubbed his mouth again in that harsh way peculiar to men. “What an innocent you are.” He looked over his shoulder. “Bring her to her room. Take care she doesn’t stumble on the stairs; we must be very careful with her, now. Women in her condition are fragile.”

Mrs Danvers felt my forehead with her cool, sweet hand. “Can you stand?”

I nodded; I could not look at her. She might read the truth of Maxim’s crimes in my eyes, and then we would both be lost.

She helped me up, an arm around my waist. My head felt heavy again, as if it was a flower and my neck a ravaged stalk. The blood returned to my head. I felt it thump, heard the stutter of my heart. I clutched at her hand; like mine, it was cold.

Up the stairs we went, slowly, carefully. I sensed a humming energy to Mrs Danvers, a desire for movement, for speech, that she smothered down. _She must’ve heard about Rebecca’s boat,_ I thought, panic and pity mingling.

How could I tell her what I knew?

How couldn’t I?

Once in my room, she helped me sit down on the edge of the bed, undid my shoes for me. How many people, I wondered, had seen the top of her head? I touched it now, her thick hair wound up and tucked away, held into place with pins.

“You mustn’t make a fuss over me. I’m truly not ill. What happened this morning was a moment of passing weakness. I don’t know why Maxim insists on a doctor seeing me. There’s no need.”

She took my hand and rubbed it against her cheek. “Oh, Madam,” she said, moving her face against my fingers, my knuckles and palm, cat-like. “Oh, Madam.”

When she looked up at me, her face was soft with emotion, her eyes liquid with it.

“What?” I asked, “What is it?”

“Madam, I think you might be with child.”

It began to rain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No explanation for Mrs Danvers' riding-crop scars just yet, but never fear, I know exactly how they came to be; I simply must find a way to organically integrate the explanation into the story.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys for all the kind comments! They really mean a lot to me and help motivate me to keep writing, hence why there’s a new chapter now 😉.

The rain came down in thick sheets. It drummed on the roof, against the walls and the mullioned windows. Someone had opened the window of my room and the sweet, green scent of summer rain drifted in, pure and cool and cleansing. How easy it was, to sit quite still and listen to the water gurgle in the drainpipes, to smell the scent of the azaleas, and not think, not feel…

Mrs Danvers kept looking at me with those liquid eyes, my knuckles dimpling her cheek. Funny, how far she and I had come, and so suddenly, too. This time yesterday I had feared her enough to scurry through the halls of my own home afraid to make a sound, as if she was some sort of predator who would pounce and break my neck if I was not careful. Now, she seemed my only friend and ally.

“I can’t be with child,” I said, very calmly, very coolly. “You are mistaken, and Maxim is, too.”

“Then why the nausea, Madam, the loss of your appetite, your heightened sense of smell? And all the time you’ve been with us, you’ve only bled once.”

“How would you know?”

“Did you think I took no interest in the habits of my new mistress, in her health and wellbeing?”

I wished to go back to that state of numbness that had held me prisoner only moments ago. It seemed preferable to the panic that now threatened to engulf me. It made my mouth dry and my heart hammer. My frock stuck to my neck and back.

“You don’t understand. I can’t be, I _mustn’t_ be…” I pulled my hand from her grip and pressed both palms hard against my eyes, watching sickly colours bloom.

Days before, I had pictured the children Maxim and I were wont to have one day, strapping boys with grazed knees and a penchant for sports and mischief. I had imagined them running through the halls of Manderley, leaving their things everywhere, tennis rackets and cricket bats, wellington boots, thumbed adventure books, leather balls. Most of all, I had thought of Maxim’s face as he beheld his sons, the pride and fierce love making him handsome. He would look at me then, that strong look softened, and he would put his arm about me and kiss my forehead, and I’d be so desperately happy I could choke on it.

Now, all I could see was that haggard, haunted look of quiet madness as he told me how he had put a bullet through Rebecca and had felt only triumph, the straying bitch at last brought to heel…

Mrs Danvers clasped my wrists and pulled my hands away. “What do you mean, Madam? Why mustn’t you be?”

It all moved about inside of me, twisting and turning, scraping my innards like a little sharp-nailed hand. It clawed its way up my throat, cutting it to ribbons, and it could not be swallowed down and hushed, it could not be denied…

Mrs Danvers rubbed the tears from my cheeks with her thumbs. “Why, Madam?”

“Because I shall never be free of him once I give him a child,” I whispered. We stared at each other, both shocked by my words. I had not known what I would say until it was said, and now it could not be taken back.

“I… I didn’t mean that,” I stammered. “I don’t know what I’m saying, Mrs Danvers. He’s my husband; of course I wish for us never to be separated….” But the words sounded hollow to me, and the rapid thumping of my heart screamed _liar, liar, liar_.

Mrs Danvers hardened. Gone was the soft, liquid look. “Of course,” she said, her voice that mechanical thing once more, stilted and lifeless, “why would you? Not even Rebecca wanted a divorce, and she cared nothing for him, despised him, even. You, who love him, who says he is your whole world, would not want to miss him, not even for a moment.” She stood and went to the window to shut it, the rain splashing on her hands and face. She did not come back to me but remained standing there. The windowpane reflected her face remarkably well. It looked pale, tight.

I felt as if I might cry. “Mrs Danvers,” I said, “Mrs Danvers, Danny, please.”

“Please what, Madam? What do you want? You still don’t know, do you? To have his child, to be free of him, to be a perfect little wife, to be another, to love him, to love me. You can’t make up your mind.”

“Please don’t,” I whispered.

She turned round, pressing her hands hard against her ribs, curling slightly forward, as if in pain. “They found her boat, but you knew that already, didn’t you? They found her, yet all Mr de Winter could worry about was you, your little sickness, your _delicate condition_. Sometimes, it’s as if I am the only one who wishes to remember her, the only one who truly cared. He doesn’t even speak of her.”

“Oh, Mrs Danvers,” I whispered, “you wouldn’t like him to. I promise you, you wouldn’t want to hear what he has to say about her.”

Two spots of colour burned high on her cheeks. “Does he call her names? Does he rail at her, denouncing her for a whore and an adulteress? Does he, Madam?”

They came again, those traitorous tears. They stung, burning hot. I nodded feebly.

She laughed. “Well, then he hasn’t forgotten to be jealous, has he? Men! When they look at women, they only see whores and saints, and like nothing better than to tear a woman down they lifted up. Trust a man never to see a woman for what she really is.”

I thought of my father, of his warm-heartedness, his laughter and love. “No, Mrs Danvers. They’re not all like that. Most men are normal.”

She laughed again. It sounded like keening. “Perhaps, but that’s the worst of it, Madam; how are we to know who is and who isn’t? Safer to assume they’re all pigs.”

I was tired as a dog, all wrung-out. “But they aren’t, Mrs Danvers, truly they aren’t. I’m sorry you think they are, but that isn’t right and it isn’t healthy.”

“It isn’t right?” She tore at her cuff, pushing the fabric up to her elbow, and held out her arm to me. With a finger she traced the scar there, the neat purple line in her flesh. “You’ve wondered how this came to be, didn’t you? I shall tell you. I went to care for Rebecca when she was seven. Her mother had died when she was born, and so a nurse had taken care of her all her life. Now that she was seven, it was time for a governess, and I was employed. I was twenty-one; my employer, her father, a man of forty-six.”

She kept moving her finger over the scar, rubbing it red. “I found out the first week that he had wandering hands, and within a month, that his hands were not the only things doing the wandering. I wished to resign then, but he wouldn’t give me a proper reference, and without one, I was worth nothing. And there was Rebecca, of course. Such a charming child. The longer I stayed, the more I loved her. The more I loved her, the harder it was to leave. Her father’s… _ministrations_ were never quite bearable, but I grew used to them. They had to be borne, for love of her.”

Still she rubbed, harsher now, her clipped nails leaving white streaks that flushed crimson. “And on and on it went, until one day when Rebecca came home early. I never knew if she suspected what her father and I did; he made sure she was not around when he paid me his little visits. Rebecca was supposed to be riding her horse, but the animal had thrown a shoe and so she’d returned earlier than expected. Sixteen she was then, with all the wit and beauty of a woman twice her age.”

Mrs Danvers smiled at the memory. It was a fragile, broken thing, this smile of hers, and it cut me deeply.

“We didn’t hear her. How could we, over his groans? But in she came, dressed in her riding habit. I didn’t know she was watching us, not until her father screamed and rolled off of me. She had struck him with her riding crop, and she kept striking at him, over and over again, breaking his skin and drawing blood. He nearly lost an eye. In the end I had to intervene; she was so wild, I thought she might strike him dead if I did nothing. I had to restrain her.

“‘You won’t ever lay a finger on her again,’ she told her father, ‘do you hear me? She’s mine now.’ He laughed through his tears, as if it was all a great joke. ‘What, do you want to fuck her yourself?’ he asked, so she hit him with her bare hand. Afterwards, she took me to her room and helped me clean the gashes she’d made, and then I was safe. So you see, I know men are not all wicked, but you’ll forgive me for not taking any chances.”

How could I ever tell her what Maxim had told me?

I went to her and stilled her scratching hand. She had broken the skin, and little beads of blood welled up. I put my mouth to the soft inside of her arm and sucked at it, fighting through the nausea to lave her poor skin with my tongue. “I’m sorry you were hurt,” I murmured.

Her hand curled against her ribs, pressing hard against her stomach. “I miss her so much I sometimes wish to destroy myself,” she whispered.

 _If anyone deserves to know what happened to Rebecca, it is Mrs Danvers. She’s the only one who truly loved her,_ I thought. Rebecca, with her brain and breeding and beauty, her wit and charm. Nothing of that had mattered in the end; she had died like a dog at the hands of the man who had sworn to love and cherish her.

If I did not tell her now, I feared I never would. I had to tell her, even though it smote me.

“Mrs Danvers, I must tell you something, something that Maxim only just told me.” My throat was still painful from where she had bruised it last night, pressing my face against the sheets as she made love to me. I swallowed thickly; the lapping at her skin had made me salivate. I kept kissing the sore spot at her arm, postponing the moment I had to talk, until she took hold of my chin and made me look up.

“What must you tell me, Madam?” she asked softly.

“It’s about Rebecca. Maxim told me…he killed her, Danny. Maxim killed Rebecca.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N Thank you everyone who has left comments and kudos on this, and thank you for being so patient! What can I say? Life is hectic and time is a construct.

I don’t know what I had expected Mrs Danvers to do after I told her. I had not allowed myself to contemplate that, and this, I suppose, was because I knew how painful the news would be to her. Any picture of her ranting or, worse, lying broken on the floor as she keened like a wounded animal would have stoppered my mouth. I would have kept this terrible hurt from her, had I not thought she had the right to know what had happened to her beloved.

I thought of all those things now as those damned words – “Maxim killed Rebecca” – had left my mouth. They flashed in front of my mind’s eye like something out of a nightmare: Danny screaming and sobbing; Danny quivering and fighting for breath; Danny collapsing like one struck down.

But she didn’t do anything. She just stood there, my chin in her hand, beads of blood pearling on the ravaged skin on the inside of her arm. Her fingers grew icy against my skin. It was as if she had put some spell on me; as long as she did not act, I had to remain paralysed, too. I could not speak, could not move, only stare into her liquid eyes and be a witness to her pain.

There is a story my father told me when I was young, a kind of myth. Christ when he bore his cross – or when he was already nailed up on it, it does not matter much – cursed a Jew who taunted him. The sweet embrace of death was denied to this man until Christ would rise again. His punishment had a second element: until the Second Coming, the Jew would have to wander the earth. Some farmers, taking pity on him, arranged the rows of their fields in such a way that he might find rest his aching bones between their crops on Sundays. His mind, though, could find no rest, for his curse had yet another side to it: the Wandering Jew would have to bear witness to human suffering until the end of times.

I had known of this element of his punishment, but that does not mean I understood. As I looked into Mrs Danvers eyes, I began to understand.

Perhaps we might have stood until eternity, had the doctor not come in and broken whatever held us in its grip. With a jerky motion, Mrs Danvers reached for my eye. For one wild moment, I thought she’d pluck it out, but no, she touched the lashes with her finger. “There,” she croaked, “it’s gone.” She nodded at the doctor, then left, her skirts rustling silkily.

Bewildered, I stared after her, my heart pounding.

“Did you have something in your eye, Mrs de Winter?” the doctor asked, and it was only then that I realised that Mrs Danvers had pretended to brush away something at my eye so the doctor might not understand what he had actually been looking at. How else could one explain her housekeeper’s sensitive fingers folded around her jaw? Even in her moment of sorrow, she was like that: brutal in her efficiency.

“It’s gone now,” I said.

The doctor smiled at me. I had met him before, had had tea with his wife centuries ago. He looked haggard and ill at ease now. It was not until he was gone that I realised he had come to me straight after examining Rebecca’s remains.

“Now, Mrs de Winter,” he said, “your husband asked me to come see you. He thinks you might be with child. Can you tell me whether you’ve had any symptoms?” He spoke calmly and soothingly, as if I was a frightened animal. It reminded me of the way the nurse spoke to Maxim’s grandmother. It might have rankled me, had I not been so distracted with worry over Mrs Danvers. Where had she gone? I did not think I could bear her being alone with this terrible, twisted thing, but then I couldn’t deny it was almost a relief she had gone. The depth of her anguish had frightened me. I had not known what to do. My lashes felt strange where she had touched them, the place from whence they grew almost sore. She had ruffled them with her fingertips.

“Mrs de Winter?”

I blinked. “I’m sorry?”

“Can you describe your symptoms to me?” The doctor was still smiling, soft and a little worriedly.

I touched my eye and tried to push my lashes back into their proper shape, but still I felt the ghost of her fingers, how she had taken half a dozen of my lashes between her tips and tugged at them as she pretended to pluck away a speck of dust. “I’m sorry,” I said, “I’m a bit rattled and distracted.”

“Well, that is understandable.”

For a moment I thought he knew, he _knew_ , but no, he was referring to Rebecca’s poor corpse being found and no more. I swallowed. That penny-taste of Mrs Danvers’ blood still lingered.

“My sense of smell has become stronger. I thought it was just because there’s so much scent here at Manderley, but now I’m not sure. I never used to feel sick at certain scents, but now I’m often nauseous. I’ve found it hard to eat.” I thought of Mrs Danvers holding out that glass of milk to me and saying I needn’t drink it if I didn’t want it. I felt her hands on me, heard her voice, soft and intimate and alive, saying I shouldn’t lose any more weight.

I thought I might weep. I rubbed my eye fiercely, wetting my fingertips.

“I see. And your cycle?”

“It has ceased two months ago, but the time before that was strange. It was very light. I didn’t think too much of it, though, because my cycle isn’t always regular.”

“That’s not unusual for someone your age,” the doctor said.

_How young do you think I am?_

“Must you examine me?” I asked.

“It would be too early to tell, but if you give me a urine sample, I can test it and give you your results after a week.” He was quiet for a minute, then added, “but I suppose it’s important for your husband to know now.”

I shivered and closed my eyes.

I had hoped I could look for Mrs Danvers as soon as the doctor had gone, but Maxim joined us near the end. He put his arm about me and kept squeezing my shoulder and kissing the top of my head. When he let the doctor out, they spoke in hushed murmurs. Were they talking of me? I found I couldn’t care. I went to the window and leaned my forehead against the pane. It was wonderfully cool. Beyond the glass, I could smell the sweet fresh scent of rain and green things replenished. The leaves filthy with dust and dirt had been washed clean.

Where was Mrs Danvers? I had a sudden picture of her gone out in the rain. The storm had largely spent itself by now, but still it came down in fits and bursts. I imagined her walking to the cliffs and standing there, buffeted by wind and wet, the dark stuff of her dress sodden and chafing against her skin. But no, Mrs Danvers was not dramatic like that. She’d be overseeing the staff, her arm disinfected and bound, her hurt carefully folded up and shelved in her chest, her body curled up around it as it throbbed.

“We shan’t dress up for dinner, not tonight,” Maxim said. “It would look wrong.”

The mere thought of food made my stomach ache. “I’m not hungry.”

“That won’t do. You must eat for two.”

He came to stand with me, his large hands resting on my shoulders. His face looked strange in the reflection of the glass, pale and masklike, beautiful in the way that horror sometimes holds loveliness. His palms were terribly hot.

“Then let’s eat,” I said.

The servants must have heard the news by now, judging by the solemn way in which they served us, how quiet they were. I felt their eyes on me, and it made me irritable. We were served cold leftovers from the fancy dress ball.

 _How funny,_ I thought as I chewed on a bit of pickled onion, _that party should have been my triumph, but it became my shame._ Now I was forced to eat my way through it all over again, strangling each bite down. Maxim kept looking at me and my plate, urging me to eat. The servants must have thought him a loving husband indeed.

“Will you send Mrs Danvers up to me?” I asked Frith when the ordeal of dinner was over. “There are things I must discuss with her.”

“She’s not well, Madam,” Frith said solemnly. “Today’s news was a great shock to her. Clarice brought her her dinner on a tray, but she hasn’t eaten.”

That was bad. “Will you let her know I have asked for her? It’s important.”

“Darling,” Maxim said, putting his hand on the small of my back and guiding me to the library so we could have our coffee, “whatever can be so terribly important that you must see Mrs Danvers straight away?”

“The nursery,” I lied. “I’ve not seen one here at Manderley, and I… I must have something to think about, something that isn’t…”

Maxim closed the door behind him and cupped my face. “You poor little dear,” he said, “this is a strain on you too, isn’t it?”

We kissed then; there was nothing I could do to avert it. When we were done, Maxim flung himself in his chair and lit a cigarette. “There’s no nursery at Manderley. There used to be one, but after a few years of marriage, Rebecca decided we had no need of one and changed it into a guestroom. We had many parties in those days, and there was always a shortage of beds.”

“I see,” I said slowly.

Jasper had come out of his basket and now put his head on my knee, looking at me with large dark eyes, his tail softly a-thump. I fondled his silken ears, then kissed them. There’s comfort to be had in the smell of a dog you love. Jasper smelled of woodsmoke and himself. I patted him almost neurotically; if only this could be over and I could look for Danny…

“You look nervy,” Maxim said.

Was that to be wondered at? I scratched Jasper under his chin. He closed his eyes in bliss. “What will happen now?” I asked.

“There’ll be an inquest. You need not come. In fact, I’d prefer if you didn’t. We can’t take any chances, not with your condition.”

He made it sound as if it was a disease. _“They found her, yet all Mr de Winter could worry about was you, your little sickness, your delicate condition.”_

“What will happen at the inquest?”

“They’ll ask questions. They’ll want to know why I identified that other woman as my wife. Worse, they’ll poke and prod into my private life, because they’ll want to understand how exactly it all went down, how Rebecca came to die inside the cabin of her own boat.”

Jasper rolled on his back in ecstasy. I put my hand on his chest. Through his soft fur I felt his ribcage, and under that the steady thump of his heart. “And after they’ve asked their questions?”

“They’ll decide whether there’s reason to prosecute me.”

My mouth felt dry. There was a tight little pain in my belly. “Do you think they will?”

He shrugged. “I’ll say the other woman was a mistake, like you suggested. I’ll say I wasn’t in my right mind. There’s not much else they can say against me, now is there? Everyone believed Rebecca and I had a happy marriage.”

 _Not Mrs Danvers. Not me_.

A wild thought came to me then. If she and I could testify against Maxim… but I saw then what would happen, saw it even though my spirits lifted and my heart leapt.

The press would make me out to be a jealous girl, insecure and therefore dangerous. I would besmirch Rebecca’s name because I wanted so desperately to believe my husband loved only me, even though all had known how he adored her. He had even fooled me, his wife, hadn’t he? Everyone already thought I had seduced Maxim and he had married me only because he was a gentleman.

 _And now that I’m pregnant for roughly as long as this marriage has existed, they’ll only believe that more_.

No one would believe Mrs Danvers, either. Servants ratting on their masters was so borderline distasteful as to be on par with a crime. It didn’t help that she hadn’t seen anything herself. She had only my word for it, and if everyone thought me crazed with jealousy, a silly little nobody telling tall tales, then what would they think of her, who so many already thought queer and unlikeable and strangely obsessed with her first mistress? 

_They’ll call her unnatural. Worse, they’ll say she’s an invert, and what credibility does she have then? As much as a vagabond or prostitute_. That was to say: none.

“Come,” Maxim said, startling me out of my reverie. I went to him; what choice did I have? I didn’t want to arouse his suspicion, and so I knelt down at his feet as I always did, and rested my temple against his knee. He smoked three more cigarettes as he stroked my head with that hot, revolting hand of his. With every touch I seemed to grow colder. My skin was hypersensitive, his fingers on my scalp an irritant.

“Soon,” he said, “all shall be well. I know I frightened you this afternoon. It won’t happen again. I am no longer that man.” He gripped my face painfully tight and made me look at him, his nail digging in the soft skin just before chin becomes jaw. “She has not defeated me, my little love. I can see that now. My spirits were depressed, but you’ve raised them up again. I’ve something to fight for now, something I didn’t have before.”

My sight became blurry. How I had longed for him to talk like this to me! Now it appalled and sickened me.

“All this suffering, the shame and lies and filth that bitch put me through for Manderley’s sake,” he said, curving his finger, his nail digging sharper into my skin, “finally have a purpose now that I know I’ll have an heir soon.”

Had any other lunatic ever raved so beautifully? The girl I had been not a day ago would have loved him. Perhaps that was the scariest of all: the knowledge that I had been the type of person who was so lonely, so desperate for love, that she could be seduced into utter devotion to a madman.

But I was that girl no more, and Maxim was not the only person in the world I could love.

I had to see her. If she would not come to me – and I feared she wouldn’t, because Maxim was with me now, and surely she didn’t want to see him – I would go to her. I had told her what had happened to Rebecca, and now I must bear the consequences of that news. No matter how frightening she might become, how she might lash out and hurt me, I needed to be there for her. This I owed her. More than that, she needed to know that she wasn’t alone anymore.

I thought of her as I drank my coffee, played chess with Maxim. In my room, I brushed my teeth and combed my hair, changed into my pyjamas, all under his watchful eye, and still I thought of her.

“Will you have to be up early tomorrow?” I asked as I rubbed some cream into my calloused hands.

“I’ll get dressed in my dressing room. I shan’t wake you. It’s vital you rest,” he promised me. I smiled at him, wishing him dead.

How long he took to fall asleep! His breath whistling through his nose enraged me as much as his swallowing had done during the party, when I had imagined crushing his throat with my fist. Quietly I seethed, until his breathing became deep and regular. Then, I got out of bed and softly moved to the door. My hand was damp. I wiped it on the hem of my nightgown.

Slowly, softly I turned the knob.

The door wouldn’t give.

I tried again, tugging at it, making it shiver in its frame, praying the wood had swollen in the humidity and the door was merely stuck, but no, it didn’t budge.

Maxim had locked us both into this room. I would have to wait until the morning came to see her.

My tears tasted bitter.


End file.
